THEN
My curfew had always been a limiting factor in my relationship with Seth. I never viewed it as a reasonable boundary given to teenagers by parents who gave a shit. It was an obstacle to be overcome, and perhaps if I was more available, Seth wouldn’t feel the need to seek sexual gratification from others. I’d been systematically testing the fence and trying to get around my curfew ever since Seth turned his lusting gaze my way.
To be able to fit getting high into my schedule meant several things had to fall away. Seth insisted I drop jiu-jitsu almost immediately. He didn’t come out and say it, though. Instead, he rearranged his schedule so that the only time he was available to provide me with drugs was during the times I’d normally be taking the class. After missing a couple of weeks, it wasn’t so hard to give it up altogether.
But my curfew continued to be the thorn in our side. Until Seth came up with a plan so risky and absolute, that it would be impossible to give it only a half-assed effort.
It was this: Seth had been a long-time patron of Sam’s Club and had gotten to know some of the management. He arranged for us both to get us employee ID cards and paid off the night manager of the stocking crew to tell anyone who might inquire about our employment, that we were legit.
Seth ordered Sam’s Club T-shirts online, so we’d have the uniform. Then he arranged to have money from his bank account direct deposited into my own account every two weeks with the description “Sam’s Club” in the memo line.
I’d like to say that I told him it was a terrible idea and refused to do it, but even I knew that I couldn’t keep up with my current lifestyle without some drastic change. So, I sold the lie to my parents as a way to save up for college. And they believed me.
Seth picked me up at 9 p.m. most evenings to go “work” our stocking shift at Sam’s Club and brought me home every morning around 2 a.m. with enough time for me to shower and get a couple hours of sleep before I had to get ready for school the next day, or if it was the weekend, sleep it off. When I got home in the afternoons, I crashed, then woke up around dinnertime and did it all over again.
The lie was so big and so deep that I could never confess any part of it without revealing myself at my most manipulative and selfish. It was the Grand Canyon of lies, and it was just one more way in which I was dependent on Seth because I could never, ever let my parents know about this deception.
Meanwhile, something else was happening during the fall and winter of my sixteenth year, something I didn’t even notice at first. My loyalties were shifting away from Seth and toward the drugs. Seth was the vehicle, but getting high was the prize.
I didn’t notice the change until one night we were in Seth’s apartment, post-sex, which meant our next scheduled event was snorting painkillers.
But Seth was dragging his feet about it, debating on whether we should go out for dinner first or order in, even though food was the last thing on my mind, and just one more obstacle getting in the way of my goal, when at last I said to him, “I don’t care what we eat, so long as it’s after a bump.”
Seth stopped thumbing through his stack of takeout menus to look me over. I was only half-dressed and still reclined in one of his plush lounging chairs.
“What?” I asked, impatient and irritable at having to wait. When most of your daily thoughts revolved around your next fix, every minute felt like a lifetime.
“Do you only come over here to get high?” Seth asked.
I stared at him, too tired for one of his mind games. I hadn’t gotten much sleep in the past few weeks, partly because I always had the feeling I had to run faster than the lies so that they wouldn’t catch up to me.
“Of course not,” I said, trying to make light of it. “I come here for the sex too.”
Seth dropped the menus on his kitchen counter and came over to kneel before me. I wondered if that meant we were going for round two.
“That’s good,” he said and rubbed my thighs with his palms. “Because I don’t feel like getting high tonight.”
First off, I knew he was lying because he was just as fixated on the drugs as I was. Second, denying me wasn’t part of our agreement in which he had explicitly stated drugs were my reward for good behavior. I couldn’t make either of those points though because that would prove that Seth had control over me. I wasn’t going to beg. Instead, I’d raise the ante and demonstrate to him that I could walk away any time I wanted. And there was nothing he could do about it.
I still believed that was true.
“Me neither,” I told him, lying through my teeth. “We should probably cut back anyway. Maybe we should go watch a movie instead.”
Seth’s eyes lit up like a deviant about to perform a crime. “That’s a great idea,” he said with what seemed to me like exaggerated excitement. “I was just thinking how long it’s been since we’ve seen a movie.”
Seth, for the most part, hated movies, especially the Hollywood variety, which he said were groupthink propaganda that only served to indoctrinate us into being obedient thought slaves to our corporate and political masters. He also hated the over-the-top heterosexual brainwashing, which, according to him, only hindered our sexual liberation. I didn’t disagree with him, but I’d been brought up on horror and slasher movies, and because I was currently working in the video recording medium, I figured I could learn as much from bad movies as I could from the ones that were done well. I also tended to focus more on technique, rather than the story.
So Seth was lying, and so was I. We both knew what was happening here, but like most of our power struggles, neither of us was going to give an inch.
“I think you should let me pick the movie,” I told him, matching his Stepford attitude with my own, “as a reward for being such a very good boy.”
Seth smiled widely and knocked my chin lightly with his fist. “You got it, bucko.”
We dressed and grabbed something to eat on our way to the theater, even while my mind kept tripping over the fact that we were not presently high because we were both stubborn as hell and had something to prove. I’d come to build my days around those few hours of bliss and not having it felt like a black hole in my daily routine. It caused me some anxiety too, to think I might have to wait another twenty-four hours for my next fix.
At the theater, I chose the cheesiest and most predictable romantic comedy. It should have gone straight to television it was so bad. The oversentimentality was disgusting, the gender roles were cemented in stone, and the ending was given away in the first scene. Seth kept yawning and glancing around like he’d rather be anywhere else. At one point he said he had to go to the bathroom, and I went with him because I didn’t trust him not to try and get high without me.
Later, outside the theater, I raved about how awesome the movie was. “And it had such a happy ending. Don’t you just love happy endings?” I gushed.
Seth only glared at me, by now having realized if he hadn’t before that I was punishing him for punishing me. Likely he was suffering from the same withdrawal I was experiencing, which at that juncture wasn’t completely physical but was definitely psychological, reminding you just how much you needed it and how scared you were to go without.
We got back to his place after midnight, and Seth, having run out of ways to outfox me, suggested we have sex again.
I yawned obnoxiously and collapsed into my favorite recliner. “I’m awfully tired,” I told him and grabbed the remote. “Why don’t we just check out what’s on the old boob tube?”
Seth stalked over to me, grabbed the remote out of my hand, and tossed it on the couch.
“So, this is how it’s going to be, Hiroku?” Seth asked, sulking above me with a look of reproach. “Aren’t you even a little bit ashamed of yourself?”
I glared up at him with a hostile, acrid feeling brewing in my gut. The mood swings I experienced while using were far more pronounced. Drug addiction did not bring out the best in me. “What would I have to be ashamed of, Seth?”
�
�Holding out for the pills? Doesn’t that make you feel a little bit slutty?”
I stood and met him at eye-level, so he could feel the anger rolling off of me in waves. “I’m the slutty one, huh? What about you? You’re the one who made this deal with me?”
“I didn’t tell you sex for drugs, Hiroku. I said I’d take care of you.”
Seth loved to turn the argument in his favor. It was one of his many talents, right up there with making me feel like a piece of meat. “Well, I’m not feeling very taken care of right now.” My rage was building like a tsunami. Perhaps it would be motivation enough to keep me away and prove to myself that I didn’t need Seth or the drugs to function.
Seth sensed the shift in my attitude. It was like he could smell my fight-or-flight pheromones concentrating in the air. He softened his tone and reached out to clasp my shoulders in an attempt to mollify me. “I just don’t want the only reason you come around here to be because I can get you high. I want you to want to be with me.”
Then maybe you shouldn’t have coerced me into this situation in the first place, my reptilian brain wanted to say, but I held my tongue because in his eyes I saw Seth’s vulnerability. All Seth ever wanted was for me to love him unconditionally as his mother should have. And in a way, I did. But my love for him wasn’t pure and innocent as it once was. It was guarded, suspicious, and at times like these, so bitter it tasted more like poison in my mouth.
Seth truly believed we could go back to the Before, and it seemed nothing I said or did would dampen his resolve to make that happen. He hadn’t mourned the death of our relationship in the way that I had. He’d never acknowledged that the love we’d had for each other was gone, and this bastardized version of reciprocal need and quest for pleasure was what we were left with. In all the time we’d been apart, he’d never stopped loving me.
Seth thought he could be forgiven, but he didn’t understand that I never would.
At the time, I didn’t think about all of this so clearly, but I knew instinctively that his blindness was something I could struggle against, or it was something I could exploit to my advantage. And if my end game was to have him continue to get me high, the choice was rather simple.
So, instead of lashing out and blaming him for creating this ravenous, insatiable monster before him, I turned on the charm.
“You’re right,” I cooed and trailed my fingers softly along the inside of his arm. “You’ve been so good to me, and here I am acting like a spoiled little brat.”
I brought his hand up to my mouth and kissed his knuckles one at a time. Seth stared at me dumbfounded, like he couldn’t believe his argument had worked.
“It’s scary sometimes,” I confessed to him, leaning in to whisper in his ear. “How much I need it. Makes it so that it’s all I can think about.” I dipped my head and looked up at him from under my lashes. “Maybe you shouldn’t give it to me anymore.”
I took his two fingers into my mouth and sucked on them, sliding my tongue along the underside of their length. Seth watched me in a lusting stupor. He was already thinking about ten minutes from now when I was naked and in his clutches. Being dependent on the drugs meant I was dependent on him to give them to me. If I was sober, I might go back to my wily ways of having a life outside of him. He might have competition for my affections. I might even leave him, and that was the fear that motivated him the most. I’d made a study of Seth’s psychology for more than a year. I knew what made him tick.
Seth withdrew his fingers from my mouth slowly, pulling on my lower lip a little on his way out. “I’m sorry I made you wait.” He traced the contour of my neck, then tugged a little at the collar of my shirt. His desire was so transparent. “That was a dick move. I just feel like sometimes when we’re together, your mind is somewhere else.”
He was absolutely right. My body was his, but my mind and soul had been claimed by another master.
“I’m right here,” I assured him. I leaned in to kiss him, taking my sweet time and giving his mouth my full attention. I pulled off my shirt and dropped down to my knees to further convince him. That position was where he always liked me best, looking up at him with my wide innocent eyes, awaiting his next command…
Afterward Seth got me high, and I told him I loved him. I may have even meant it.
You tell me, who was the monster now?
NOW
There’s a phrase I keep thinking of here in rehab, or rather a lyric:
Fear is the heart of love.
It’s from a song by Death Cab for Cutie, and I keep going over it in my reflections. I dealt with a lot of fear in loving Seth. Fear that he would leave me for someone else. Fear that he was cheating on me or lying to me. Fear that I wasn’t artsy, sexy, or interesting enough to hold his attention.
And Seth feared abandonment or as he called it, being “shut out” by me. Perhaps he was also scared I might one day take a hard look at our relationship and say enough is enough.
Dr. Denovo and I have this ongoing discussion about love and its foundation. Doc tells me love is based on honesty, respect and compassion. He doesn’t come right out and say it, but he’d like for me to believe that my relationship with Seth was somehow less of a partnership because of the fear, mistrust and power struggles. That our love was just a series of artful manipulations.
But I’m not sure I agree. Even if our love was a poison slowly consuming us, that didn’t make it any less potent. Even if fear was the heart of our love, it didn’t make our feelings for each other any less real. And even when Seth sought to hurt me, it didn’t necessarily mean that he didn’t also love me. When a parent disciplines a child, isn’t that also a form of love?
Some might argue that fear is the most basic of human emotions, and without it, how could you possibly know love? How can you know happiness if you’ve never known sorrow? What is pleasure without pain?
As Seth once said to me during one of his bouts of melancholy, I couldn’t ride him all the way up unless I was willing to ride him all the way down.
Only I couldn’t predict how far it would go.
THEN
There was one aspect of my former self I clung to with a death grip in my swift descent into addiction, and that was my GPA. It was kind of strange how I hinged so much of my self-perception of handling my shit on maintaining my straight-A average. Not missing a class, quiz, test, or homework assignment. Even though I’d created this fake job in order to go get high with Seth most nights, in my mind so long as I kept an impeccable transcript, everything was A-okay.
It also meant that I hadn’t given up completely on my future because if I could keep up my grades, then a good college was still within my reach. I’d figure out a way to kick all of my bad habits and resume the persona of straight-edge Hiroku I’d been keeping on ice for all of these months. Like switching out a light fall jacket for a winter coat.
It was the beginning of December, final semester exams were upon me, and I needed to stay in one night and study. Seth was dealing with some band drama—Jeannie was pregnant, and Mitchell was talking about cutting back on rehearsing in order to get a nine-to-fiver. Seth wanted me to talk some sense into him, but I had no idea what to say, and it seemed like maybe he should start looking for full-time work because being a rock star wasn’t exactly paying the bills. Seth had his trust fund, Sabrina still lived at home, Dean was a mechanic, but Mitchell was still trying to make ends meet by working for minimum wage at Sunoco. I respected Mitchell for wanting to do right by Jeannie, whether it meant marrying her or paying child support, both of which required making a decent living. His priorities seemed to be in the right place to me.
I told Seth it might be time for Mitchell to get a real job. Seth accused me of not having the same commitment to Petty Crime as everyone else. I was stressed with school, which was exacerbated by the fact that I couldn’t get high, so I snapped at him, “Why would I be as committed? I’m not in the band, Seth.”
“Of course you are,” Seth argued. “Why wo
uld you even say that?”
I didn’t feel like getting into an argument with him over the phone, and my time to study was quickly slipping away from me.
“Look, Seth, I really need to study for these exams. I can’t get drawn into band drama right now. Give Mitchell some time to process this huge life change before you go pressuring him into something. Sometimes people have to make decisions for themselves about what’s best for their own goddamned lives.”
Seth glared at me. I knew because we were FaceTiming. “I wouldn’t want to get between you and your Harvard acceptance letter,” Seth said snottily. “What would I know anyway? I’m just a high school dropout.”
I rolled my eyes and told him not to make this about himself. We sparred a little more and then hung up in a huff. I turned my attention back to my studies and figured we’d make up the next night when they performed at Eileen’s. They hadn’t played out in a while, and that was probably part of the reason Seth was on edge. And that damned unfinished album. I still hadn’t written their anthem because so many other things had taken precedence in my mind. I told Seth to go ahead and finish it without me, but he insisted the story was incomplete without my contribution.
No pressure there.
Seth picked me up the next night, a Friday, to take me to our “shift at Sam’s,” which would go until six in the morning. I changed clothes on our way to Eileen’s. Once I was in the passenger seat beside him, Seth brought up Mitchell’s predicament again and then started talking shit about Jeannie, basically blaming her for being stupid enough to get pregnant, calling her a slut and a whore and saying Mitchell couldn’t even be sure the kid was his.
I’d had enough of him making her out to be some kind of monster. “Jeannie has been with us since the beginning, and she’s been with Mitchell for even longer,” I reminded Seth. “She didn’t get pregnant on her own, so why are you putting all of this on her?”
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